Paul M. Jones

We thus stand at a crossroads for American capitalism. One path would channel popular rage into political support for some genuinely pro- market reforms, even if they do not serve the interests of large financial firms. By appealing to the best of the populist tradition, we can intro- duce limits to the power of the financial industry--or any business, for that matter -- and restore those fundamental principles that give an ethical dimension to capitalism: freedom, meritocracy, a direct link between reward and effort, and a sense of responsibility that ensures that those who reap the gains also bear the losses. This would mean abandoning the notion that any firm is too big to fail, and putting rules in place that keep large financial firms from manipulating government connections to the detriment of markets. It would mean adopting a pro-market, rather than pro-business, approach to the economy.

The alternative path is to soothe the popular rage with measures like limits on executive bonuses while shoring up the position of the largest financial players, making them dependent on government and making the larger economy dependent on them. Such measures play to the crowd in the moment, but threaten the financial system and the public standing of American capitalism in the long run. They also reinforce the very practices that caused the crisis. This is the path to big-business capitalism: a path that blurs the distinction between pro-market and pro-business policies, and so imperils the unique faith the American people have long displayed in the legitimacy of democratic capitalism. Unfortunately, it looks for now like the Obama administration has chosen this latter path.

via Dynamist Blog: Don't Let U.S. Capitalism Go the Italian Route. (All emphasis mine.)

GENEROUS PAY for new Freddie Mac CFO. “The government-controlled mortgage finance company is giving CFO Ross Kari compensation worth as much as $5.5 million. That includes an almost $2 million cash signing bonus and a generous salary that could top $2.3 million.” It’s okay to pay him a lot. He works for the government.

via Instapundit » Blog Archive » GENEROUS PAY for new Freddie Mac CFO. “The government-controlled mortgage finance company is giving….

So if the biggest impact has already happened and the effect is going to level off, can we have the other $593 billion back, please?

via GIVE THE MONEY BACK!.

Solar 1.0.0alpha5 has been released, with a few bugfixes and one change. The change notes are below. Also of note, I have created separate "alpha" and "beta" branches, so we can continue bugfix releases on the alpha side while not having to release new beta features.

• Solar_Form
  • [FIX] Form attributes for id, name, and class are now reset properly. Thanks, jelofson and stloyd, for the report and patch.
• Solar_Class
  • [FIX] Do not use $this for exceptions in a static method call. Thanks, Richard Thomas, for the report and patch.
• Solar_Sql_Model_Cache
  • [FIX] Method getCacheKey() now converts the fetch params to array before unsetting values. Was previously unsetting the 'cache' value (among others) causing cache results not to be saved in Solar_Sql_Model. Thanks, Anthony Gentile, for the report that led to this fix.
  • [FIX] Default adapter is now Solar_Cache_Adapter_None, as it is in Solar_Sql_Model.
• Solar_Sql_Model_Params_Eager
  • [CHG] Method joinCond() (and array key 'join_cond') now accept arrays for cond => val the same way where() and having() do in fetch params. Thanks, Anthony Gentile, for the report that led to this change.
• Solar_Sql_Model_Params_Fetch
  • [FIX] In method cache(), use $this, not $$this. Was preventing the cache value from being set, so it was always null. Thanks, Anthony Gentile, for the report that led to this fix.
• Solar_Sql_Model_Record
  • [FIX] In method newFilter(), do not add filters for table cols that are not part of the fetch cols. All other filters are still added.
• Solar_Sql_Model_Related_HasManyThrough
  • [FIX] In _modEagerFetchJoin(), cast the base join conditions to array before merging.

File this under "nothing hotter than a woman putting fire and steel on target".

Men do not want to be princes. Princes are born into success, men make their own. We want women who share that same ethic, however it is success is defined. It’s just not sexy to date a helpless princess with an aversion to peas and a bluebird fetish. Give us Sarah Connor in a black cocktail dress pumping a shotgun any day.

via Guy's Opinion On The Princess Complex | The Frisky.

"This system is insane. It is fragmented to the point of incoherence. Record-keeping is stuck in the 1960s. Communication is stuck in the 1980s. None of the systems talks to the others. Everyone reinvents the wheel at every stage of the process. There is no pricing transparency.

"In a sane, modern system, I wouldn't have to arrange each leg of my flight myself. I wouldn't have to fax documents around, find and juggle multiple providers, fill out again and again what are essentially the same forms every time I use a provider.

"In a sane system, I would call an airline and it would give me a price for the whole trip, not just for one part of it. It would sell me a safe round-trip journey, instead a series of separate procedures. It would have back-office personnel using modern IT systems to coordinate my journey behind the scenes. The systems and personnel would talk to each other automatically. At the press of a button, once I entered a password, they would be able to look up my travel history. We'd do most of this stuff online.

via National Journal Magazine - If Air Travel Worked Like Health Care.

I am no fan of Franken, but credit where credit is due:

Noting that he received a copy of the Constitution when he was sworn in as a senator, he proceeded to read it to Kris, emphasizing this part: “no Warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

“That’s pretty explicit language,” noted Franken, asking Kris how the “roving wiretap” provision of the Patriot Act can meet that requirement if it doesn’t require the government to name its target.

Kris looked flustered and mumbled that “this is surreal,” apparently referring to having to respond to Franken’s question. “I would defer to the other branch of government,” he said, referring to the courts, prompting Franken to interject: “I know what that is.”

Kris explained that the courts have held that the law’s requirements that the person be described, though not named, is sufficient to meet the demands of the Constitution. That did not appear to completely satisfy Franken’s concerns.

via The Washington Independent » Al Franken Reads the 4th Amendment to Justice Department Official.

Nothing says "a free Republic" like State-sponsored media:

Obama open to newspaper bailout bill

The president said he is "happy to look at" bills before Congress that would give struggling news organizations tax breaks if they were to restructure as nonprofit businesses.

"I haven't seen detailed proposals yet, but I'll be happy to look at them," Obama told the editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade in an interview.

And nothing says "liberty and freedom" like State-directed art:

EXPLOSIVE NEW AUDIO Reveals White House Using NEA to Push Partisan Agenda

On August 10th, the National Endowment for the Arts, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and the Corporation for National and Community Service hosted a conference call with a handpicked arts group. This arts group played a key role in Obama’s arts effort during his election campaign, as declared by the organizers of the call, and many on the call played a role in the now famous Obama Hope poster.

Much of the talk on the conference call was a build up to what the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was specifically asking of this group. In the following segment, Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, clearly identifies this arts group as a pro-Obama collective and warns them of some “specific asks” that will be delivered later in the meeting.

So much for the "last alpha release" of the Solar Framework for PHP 5. ;-) The alpha4 release corrects a dozen small bugs so that users don't have to wait for the beta in about 7 weeks.

(Cross-posted from the Solar blog.)

The change notes are as follows:

• Solar_Cli_MakeVendor

  • [FIX] Mismatched ol/ul tags are now matched properly as ul. Thanks, Jon Elofson, for the report.

  • [FIX] Add closing </p> tag in browse template. Thanks, Jon Elofson, for the report.

  • [FIX] In _list and _item templates, use the model locales, not the app locales, when labeling columns. Thanks, Jon Elofson, for the report.

  • [FIX] In method _makeLinks(), skip links that already exists. Thanks,Dmytro Konstantinov, for the report and original patch.

  • [FIX] Correct the target for the tests symlink.

• Solar_Form_Load_Model

  • [FIX] In method _fixOptions(), use $filter, not $v.

• Solar_Sql_Adapter_Sqlite

  • [FIX] In method _fetchIndexInfo(), quote the index name as an entity, not as a prepared-statement bound value.

• Solar_Sql_Model

  • [FIX] In _fixFetchParams(), use $_fetch_cols by default (not $_table_cols).

• Solar_Sql_Model_Params_Fetch

  • [FIX] Method limit() now properly accepts load parameters. Thanks, Jeff Surgeson for the report that led to this fix.

  • [FIX] Methods where() and having() now honor empty values properly for conditions. Thanks, Anthony Gentile, for the report leading to this fix.

• Solar_Sql_Model_Related

  • [FIX] In method _fetchIntoArrayAll(), when a collated result is empty, use fetchEmpty() for its value, not a hard-coded null. Thanks, Anthony Gentile, for the report that led to this fix.

• Solar_View_Helper_Form

  • [FIX] In method addElements(), use correct needle/haystack args for in_array(). Thanks, Jon Elofson, for the report.

Paterson grew up in poverty on the Western frontier. She had only two years of formal schooling. But she learned from her own experience, as well as her encyclopedic knowledge of history, that economic success results from individual initiative, not federal management. As an author, she also knew what makes a plausible story and could see that there could not possibly be a happy ending to the government’s efforts to fix everything that was broken in the 1930s.

Both Roosevelt and his hapless predecessor, Herbert Hoover, tried to inspire confidence by keeping unsuccessful enterprises afloat at the expense of successful ones. Strangely, prudent investors declined to be stimulated, no matter how fervently they were exhorted to trust the government’s programs. For Paterson, that result was tediously predictable. She told readers she was “tired of being told that ‘credit depends on confidence.’ Fudge. Credit depends on real assets, sound money and a clean record. … When any one asks us to have confidence we are glad to inform him that the request of itself would shatter any remaining confidence in our mind.”

Then there was the issue of government planning. To Paterson, the notion that federal experts can plan to ensure the people’s welfare was a ridiculous projection of childish fantasies--“a mother’s boy economic program with a kind maternal government taking care of everybody out of an inexhaustible income drawn from mysterious sources.” Perfect planning requires perfect foresight--and who possesses that?

via The American Conservative -- Finding Atlas.